The Statue of John Rand

Beatrice Riese was an abstract painter born in The Hague, Netherlands. In 1940, shortly before the Germans invaded France, she escaped with her parents to Africa and from there sailed to the United States. She married a Spanish anarchist, but they divorced and Riese moved to New York City, and supported herself and her young son by working as a textile designer. The abstract painting and drawing style she eventually developed, with its gridded geometric forms filled with finely worked calligraphic lines, suggest the patterns of woven fabric and stitchwork.

A major cause for Riese's divorce stemmed from the fact that her husband did not encourage her pursuit of painting professionally. She claimed, "With the advent of Women's Liberation, I began to read the newspapers and I began to realize that I was not the only one downtrodden. I learned about civil rights and feminism..."